Books for You
The fifth-graders at Butler Catholic School have been hitting the books this week. But it's not in preparation for finals at the end of the school year.
The 35 members of the classes of Jennifer Friel, Sara Skwirut and Rosemary Watson have been sorting the 1,600 books they've collected as part of the grade's community service project.
The books, ranging from young children's pop-up volumes to Stephen King paperbacks — were gathered in March.
The fifth-graders are arranging the books for their eventual destinations, the 25-neighborhood little free libraries in Butler County and the empty library shelves of Broad Street Elementary School before the school reopens in the fall for the 2021-22 school year.
The little free libraries are neighborhood book exchanges housed in freestanding public bookcases.
“This year was unique. We were all trying to do a community project,” Friel said.
“The fifth grade's theme was kindness and how to show kindness,” she said.
Usually, Butler Catholic School will do a schoolwide project, but this school year, because of the pandemic restrictions, each grade did their own project.Friel said she came up with the idea of the book drive after talking about it with her reading class. She enlisted her fellow fifth-grade teachers Skwirut and Watson to help in the effort.The teachers decided the donated books would go to restocking the little free libraries.They quickly found out that they would have to adjust their numbers.Friel said students kept bringing in new locations for the little free libraries, until finally they had a list of 25 across the city of Butler and the county, ranging from Sarver to Slippery Rock.“Students were saying to me, 'Mrs. Friel, there's one right down the street from me. I'd never seen it before,'” she said.“What makes us really unique is we pull from eight different school districts. We're geographically diverse,” Friel said. “It's only fair to put them in libraries all over the county.”And their students kept bringing in books and getting the rest of the school involved in the literary collection.“Students brought them in and dropped them off into open boxes. We checked to make sure they were appropriate and gently used,” Friel said.By the time the month had ended, the students had amassed 1,600 books.“I think I brought in maybe 30,” said fifth-grader Leah Chau, of Butler. “They're mostly my own from before I outgrew them.”Fellow fifth-grader Drew Weifenbaugh said, “I brought four of my own. I haven't read them in a while.”His donations have just made more space for new volumes.“I am currently reading the Harry Potter series. I'm on book four (out of seven),” he said.
The results forced the teachers to readjust their plans.Skwirut said, “I did not believe we would have the turnout that we did. It was incredible. I thought we would get a couple hundred. It was nothing like we got.”Friel said, “I saw online that the Broad Street school was in need of books to fill their library because they are reopening.” The school closed in 2015 because of a Butler Area School District reorganization plan and has been used as a cyber center, where elementary teachers conducted online classes.In addition to sorting through their collection to find books that would be fitting for an elementary school library, the students are trying to match the books to the right little library.For example, Friel said, for the little free library in Slippery Rock, the students are making sure some of the books will appeal to college students as well as volumes for the younger readers who may use it.Friel said, “We are trying to get the right books in the right hands.”She said the fifth-graders were working on sorting every spare minute, before homeroom period or taking a few minutes from snack time.It's a task made more pressing by the preceding months of the pandemic, when many were not able to go into a library.Watson said working on the project has inspired her to build her own little free library in her Sarver neighborhood.“I'm thinking about building one in the front yard of my home in Grandview Estates in Sarver,” she said. “I'm a big reader, mostly in the summer. I already have a stack of books to start reading.”Next weekend, the teachers are asking for parent volunteers to help deliver the books to the free little libraries.“We were very limited by COVID with what we were allowed to do,” said Friel. “So we had to dig deep and think outside the box, but our families have been so generous.”Fifth-grader Andrea Swift, of Butler, said, “I brought 40 books. There are a lot of books that we do not read.”“I was really surprised by the amount of books the students brought in,” said Friel.“I'm just thrilled and amazed what the kids can do when they put their minds to it,” she added. “They are eager to get them out there and into the hands of readers.”
